THE LAST STATION, NAGASAKI
The Story Behind a Photograph
The train from Hakata reached Michino-o Station in Nagasaki around 3 a.m. on August 10, 1945 and could go no farther south into Nagasaki. Beyond Michino-o, the tracks had been erased by the atomic bomb. Small fires glowed throughout the ruined city ahead. The train had reached the last station before the darkness.
A photographer, Yosuke Yamahata, on assignment from the Japanese military, climbed down from the train along with a writer, Jun Higashi, and a painter, Eiji Yamada. Their assignment: document the destroyed city of Nagasaki in an effort to convey to the Japanese leadership what had taken place three days after the “New Style Bomb” destroyed Hiroshima.
In the middle of a star-filled night, Yamahata and his companions walked two hours south through the roadless city to a military headquarters damaged by the bomb but still standing. As the sun rose, Mr. Yamahata and the other two men retraced their steps back through the August heat, humidity and ruins of the city, recording what had taken place.
Mr. Yamahata’s 117 photographs, made with his 35mm Leica camera, remain the single most complete documentation of what an atomic bomb actually does to a city. All other photographs of the bomb’s aftermath in Nagasaki were taken days, weeks, and even months later. Six photographs were made in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing by Yoshito Matsushige.
By late afternoon, the three men returned to Michino-o station. At the station, several nurses were treating the wounded and the dying. No doctors were available to help. The city’s doctors had either been killed or were away from the city serving in the military.
Kikuno Nishikubo was one of the nurses, nineteen years old, a student nurse with the Japanese Red Cross. She arrived at Michino-o Station at 4 a.m. She would be photographed by Mr. Yamahata at the end of his long day’s journey as she tended to the wounded.
I was able to photograph Ms. Nishikubo in 1995 at the Nagasaki Journey exhibition of Mr. Yamahata’s photographs. In one of my photos, Ms. Nishikubo stands across from the picture of herself taken by Mr. Yamahata fifty years earlier.
As we prepared the Nagasaki Journey exhibit, I returned to Michino-o station with Shogo Yamahata, the son of Yosuke Yamahata. Shogo and I were participants in a documentary film produced by Emiko Amagawa for NHK that included our Nagasaki Journey efforts—a curiosity given that our project originated with Americans who wanted to show the aftermath of the American bombing.
Michino-o station then remained a train stop with several small shops bordering the station and remains so to this day. Shogo showed his father’s photos to the owner of a convenience store, whose name I failed to record in my notes. We asked if the man had any memories from the afternoon of August 10. The man said he was at the station when the atomic bomb was dropped and remembered the aid station with nurses established near his shop.
Michino-o Station, 1995.
Shogo Yamahata, left, and the owner of the convenience store.
To make sure we weren’t putting words in the man’s mouth, we asked if there was anything else he remembered. He said he remembered a tall man methodically taking photographs.
The key detail was the height of the photographer. Mr. Yamahata was unusually tall, seen here in his military uniform prior to the bombing.
On the afternoon of August 10, 1945, after taking his final pictures at Michino-o Station, Mr. Yamahata and his companions stepped onto a departing train and left Nagasaki.
Instead of returning to the Hakata military base where he received his orders, Mr. Yamahata traveled to his family home in Tokyo without submitting his photos to the Japanese military. Mr. Yamahata wrote that he decided not to surrender the photos to the military for fear they would be used in “one last misguided attempt to rouse popular support to continue the war.”
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, we conclude with the words of Kikuno Nishikubo in the form of five haiku.
Five Haiku
Nagasaki, August 1945
such cruelty
my body rigid
A-Bomb Day
the day of the Bomb
I watch a patient die
before I can ask her name
on my chest
the smell of medicine
A-Bomb Anniversary
today we lost the war
I wait for a train
the red moon
leaving the wounded
the summer night train
departs
by Kikuno
translated by Lequita Vance-Watkins
Bibliography
The Day After the Atomic Bombing, Photo Analysis and Commentary, Sei Matsuda, Yoshlimurabunko, 2025.
Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, August 10 1945, Author, Editor and Exhibition Consultant, Rupert Jenkins, Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995.
* 1945 black and white photograph of the Sanno Shrine torii gate by Shigeo Hayashi.
* 1995 16mm color film of the Sanno Shrine torii gate by Judy Irving and Christopher Beaver.
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